So as they say every cloud has a silver lining, I had a week from the very bowels of Hell followed by one from the hallowed gates of Heaven. I won’t dwell on the crappy week, suffice to say I was glad to kick its sorry ass back down to the Underworld, but the good week was particularly lovely in the fact that my current WIP Playing Dead made it to the #3 spot on the Wattpad vampire hot list!

This is the highest position any of my works has ranked since I joined Wattpad (Blood Wars previously reached #16) so to see Playing Dead suddenly hit a top five spot felt pretty blood amazing, even if it turns out to be a very short-lived stay.

The Wattpad hot list rankings are confusing to say the least and my tiny tech-resistant brain can’t cope with how it all works and from experience I know that just because you’re ranking one day, doesn’t mean you will be there the next. In fact, when I was posting Blood Wars, all three books in the series were in the top 100 and seemed to be doing really well and literally overnight they all disappeared. See? Non comprendez. No speakey de Wattpad.

Playing Dead has accumulated almost 190,000 reads and over 7000 votes since I started posting back in August and to put that in some kind of perspective, Dark Sanctuary has only just reached 198,000 reads and 6500 votes and that’s been fully uploaded since November 2012. And so if you’re one of those people who has helped Playing Dead reach #3, then a huge big Cinnamon thank you to you! I’ve received some amazing comments and feedback from all the Wattpad readers, some of whom have been with me since the beginning and some who I’ve gathered along the way. Each day brings new readers, new points of view and new Harper Cain fans!

I’m immensely honoured that anyone would want to read my stuff, let alone the number of people who have been kind enough to spend time reading Playing Dead and waiting patiently for my weekly updates.

If you’re a writer, particularly a new writer who wants to find the right kind of public forum on which to start posting their work, you could do no wrong than making a start on Wattpad. I’ve been lucky enough to meet and befriend people from all over the world, people of all ages and from all walks of life who come together to take a walk in somebody’s imaginary world. I’ve met and befriended some great writers, some of whom having found success on Wattpad are now taking that leap of faith into self-publishing. So if you have something that you’d like to post, whether it be poetry or paranormal, thrillers or fanfic, come along and join up.

And if you’re not quite ready to post and just want to read…..then please do come along and read Playing Dead. I’d love to see you all there!

The walls were whispering. Ghosts of whispers and whispers of ghosts.
With my knees pulled up into my chest, I sat with my head leaning against the wall, my ear pressed against its cold surface and I listened to them, breathing their painful lament out through brick and mortar. Their bodies might have been long free of this place, but their souls weren’t. They were trapped within these walls, scratching at cracks that spread out across the flaking plaster like spidery thread veins, fighting to be heard, fighting for someone, anyone to listen.
And so, I listened. I closed my eyes and breathed in the voices. The latent screams of vampires, so many of my kind, mutilated, pulled apart and left for dead, only the biggest tragedy was that they hadn’t died when the Varúlfur had come for them. If they had, then they would never have become trapped here in these walls of death, imprisoned forever and unable to escape the unbearable agony of their dark fate.
And before that, before this place had become a makeshift vampire hospital during the days of the Great Cleansing, I could hear the screams of the asylum patients. Horrible, ear splitting cries as if their very souls were being ripped apart, torn into a thousand pieces and devoured by demons. Screams of such spine chilling terror as the asylum doctors sought to torture them all in the guise of curing them of their madness. And even worse, babies. I could hear the first guttural cries of babies, their howls mixing together with the enduring screams of their committed mothers as they were taken from them seconds after birth and cursed with the same sickness. There had been no nursery here. Just bones, upon bones, upon bones.

It’s been a while hasn’t it? But the good news is I have been writing like a demon and posting new novel Playing Dead to Wattpad.

So far the reaction has been amazing. 67,000 reads and over 3000 votes, it’s currently nestling happily at #15 in the vampire charts (highest position was #8). Already I can see it will overtake the Dark Sanctuary series in the popularity stakes, something I never expected, so I decided that it deserved it’s very own Facebook page.

Please do come along and give the page a big LIKE and if you haven’t checked it out already, please come and read it on Wattpad.

“You angels, you see nothing. You’re blind to the real world. You don’t want to see it. All you want is beauty and perfection and this wonderful little bubble you put yourselves in, where nobody can touch you, nobody can defile you with reality. When I met you, I was so surprised at how close you already were to the edge. It was so easy really. All you needed was a little push. And trust me, there is nothing in this world more pleasurable than watching an angel fall to her death. Nothing at all.”

“Who else is involved?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he replied and the same exhaustion laced his voice as it did my own.
“Of course it matters. My pictures were plastered all over your wall. Someone had been watching me, for weeks, months maybe. Don’t you think I have a right to know who else you enlisted to help lure me to my death?”
“And what would be the point, Megan, huh? So you can seek revenge on them also? All you need to know is sitting here, right in front of you.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You said there was a plan. I remember now. You said turning me wasn’t a part of that plan, but you did it anyway. What plan did you mean?”
“The plan was to kill you, I told you that,” he snapped.
“So do you have these little galleries of all the people you choose to kill? Did Margaret have a gallery? Did you send someone to stalk her during the day, take sneaky creepy pictures to hang on your wall so you could sit here and get off on just what you were going to do to her?”
He ran a tongue over his teeth, curling his lips back over his gums before wrinkling his nose in disgust and looking away.
“What? What Harper? You had pictures of me on your wall which someone else clearly took for you. You obviously don’t do this for all your supposed victims and yet you did it for me. Why? And then you turned me, instead of killing me, except that wasn’t part of the plan. Whose plan? Yours? Mr Creepy Photographer? Where is he by the way? Do I get to meet him?”
“Stop it.” His voice was a low menacing warning and he looked at me, his eyes narrowing to cold emerald slits.
“Why? I have a right to know.”
“Not this you don’t.”
“Bullshit!” I shouted, slamming my hands down on the floor and picking up handfuls of torn photos and brandishing them at him. “This gives me the right. Now just tell me!”
He sat up, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees as he cast his eyes over me, chewing thoughtfully on his bottom lip. “Okay,” he said. “But I warn you, you may wish you had never asked. You have learned so many unpleasant things recently, I wonder if you are strong enough to withstand anymore?”

Sitting up straight on his lap, with my hands on my thighs, I turned and looked out of the window; the same one that just a few moments ago I had stood on the other side of, looking in at this man so full of life and now motionless and extinct. I could see nothing beyond the window pane. The street was gone. The world seemed filled with shadows; so many shadows pressing themselves against the glass, crushing into every space until there was nothing but a grotesque mass of their twisted black bodies, writhing and undulating as they watched me. Leering faces painted with wicked grins and a thousand terrible teeth were grinding themselves against the window, licking their lips in lustful appreciation.
The old Megan would have been shrieking in undiluted terror now. The old Megan would have literally lost her grip on her sanity as reality was ripped violently away from her. The old Megan was lost and as dead as the thing now laying beneath me.
The new Megan was here now and as I slipped silently from the house, grinning with dark menace, I felt the cool hush of night air soothe my burning skin and I opened my arms wide and embraced the waiting shadows, welcoming their company and wondering how I had ever lived without them.

“You don’t have a clue what’s happened to you, do you?”
There was something cold and menacing about his voice, as if there was some underlying threat in what he asked, something I did not want to know. I didn’t answer; just continued to watch him warily, feeling the loud beat of my heart filling my head with a rush of noise that made me think of the bright red timer of a bomb, ticking away to zero. Only what happened when the bomb got to zero, I had no idea but the prospect of the explosion, scared the hell out of me.
“Do you know what I am?” he asked.
“N-no. Y-yes. I don’t know,” I stammered, trying to concentrate on breathing in and out deeply.10.
“You do know. You just don’t want to say it.”
“I know what you did to me.”9.
“And what was that exactly?” That smug look again. That same infuriating, gut-churning smug look.8.
“You…you bit me.” The thought of it, of feeling his teeth pierce my skin, spilling my blood, made me want to vomit and yet thrilled me at the same time.7.
“Yes. Yes I did. And why would I do that? What am I?” He leaned forward and placed both hands on the floor, rising onto his knees and he began to slowly, carefully, crawl across the floor towards me. His movements were fluid, considered and there was something very animalistic about them.
“Stop,” I pleaded, my chest racked with laboured breaths. “D-don’t come any closer.”6.
“Then answer the question. What am I?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Please.” I edged along the wall, closer and closer to the hole. Throwing myself into the blackness seemed more tolerable than this.5.
“It’s not a difficult question. I bit you. I drank from you.”Blood. My blood. Seeping out onto my skin and he was lapping it up, revelling in the taste on his lips.
The thirst was ripping into me again. Such terrible thirst.No, not now. Please. Not now.
“So. What am I?”4.
I clutched at my stomach and clawed at my throat. I edged backwards until I was right on the edge. Maybe some great hellish tentacle would reach out and drag me into the abyss. I hoped it would.
Harper stalked closer still; his eyes glistening with pure malevolent blackness.
“You tasted so damn good.”3.
The pains twisted and consumed me. I licked my lips. I was burning up again.
“Stop,” I hissed. “Just stop.”
He was almost upon me now. If I reached out, I could fall upon him. Attack him.Bite him. 2.
He smiled. I saw his teeth again. Elongated and so very sharp.Burning, burning, burning. With anger. With thirst. With want.
“All you have to do is say it.”
I groaned. Something between pain and desire.1.
He was right there. In front of me. I felt his fingers touch my bare toes and I wanted to recoil at his touch and wrap myself around him all at the same time.
“I know what you are,” I whispered. “You’re a demon. You’re a monster.
His eyes flashed and he moved his face dangerously close to mine. I felt his breath on my skin. Reaching out, he ran his thumb down my cheek softly, igniting the fuse and sending sparks exploding through me.
“No, Megan. You’re the monster.”
I stared at him, wide-eyed and breathless. And I knew. Iknew.0.